Last night's TV

"I'm Heston Blumenthal," said Heston Blumenthal, by now needlessly. "And I run one of the best restaurants in the world." You have to presume from all the telly he's doing - this new series is practically stepping on the heels of his adventures with Little Chef - that he doesn't cook in it much.

Heston's Victorian Feast (Channel 4) saw the pope of molecular gastronomy create a meal inspired by the culture and cookery of the Victorian age, and serve it to the most glamorous celebs the producers could round up. They were former Blue Peter presenter Richard Bacon; former Scud stud Rageh Omaar; serial nudist Dawn Porter; Aussie multiple-pun laugh failure Kathy Lette; Redgrave Jemma Redgrave and Toby Young, the Simon Pegg it's OK to hate.

There was a lot of unnecessary motivational blether at the outset. "I'm on a mission," Heston informed us. "I'm on a food adventure." "I'm on a slightly silly formatted TV programme" would have been more true to the facts.

Still, on he went: "I passionately believe I can create a once-in-a-lifetime feast ..." "I'm determined ..." "Meal of a lifetime ..." "Most extraordinary feast ever ... " "Throw away your cookbooks and don't try this at home." You'd think he was about to jump out of an aeroplane, not cook a meal.

But for all that, it was extraordinary. Heston lacks telly charisma, if you ask me - those "passion" and "mission" lines were delivered with the uncertain enthusiasm of a born lab-tech - but what he does with grub is gripping.

What did Victorians like? Turtle soup, sex, absinthe, jelly, opium and sex, apparently. Describing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as "the quintessential Victorian novel" (if he'd been a literary critic, this show would have been much less fun), Heston used it as inspiration for a "trippy" meal.

He started with a "Drink Me" potion in which he layered infusions of toffee, hot buttered toast, custard, cherry tart and turkey. Then - after a diverting investigation into how disgusting real turtle soup is - he made mock-turtle soup (cow's head soup is what that was) and reduced it to a gold-leaf-wrapped stock-cube, in the shape of a fob-watch, that would deliquesce in a cup of hot water to make broth for the Mad Hatter's tea party.

There followed a six-foot edible Victorian garden (olive soil, potato rocks, deep-fried insects etc). Then the finale. Earlier, Heston promised us "a soup from the pages of fantasy". Now he produced a pudding from the pages of the Fantasy Channel: "an erotic jelly awash with absinthe and dildos". In it came - a mountainous wizard's sleeve of jelly glowing like a Chernobyl postman, and served with silver vibrators rather than spoons. Oh God, you thought. Don't give that to Kathy Lette. That's like a red rag to a bull.

You won't have learned much about food, or about Victorians, or about anything else from this lavishly ridiculous programme. But I'd be a liar if I said I won't be watching its sequels. And you can't get food poisoning by watching him on the telly.

Into the lavishly ridiculous but enjoyable category, too, comes Mistresses (BBC1). I've come late to this show, and have been scrutinising it closely - as I imagine have many heterosexual men - for insights into What Women Want. Hints in last night's episode included: men listening with chiselled empathy at the bedsides of the dying; bathtubs surrounded by candles; mini-breaks to Paris; fit men in aprons; fit men with stethoscopes; men who read Garciá Márquez in bed; adorable millionaires who play boyishly with Scalextric sets; men who buy football stadiums with a chilling curl of the lip; expensive frocks; high-heeled shoes.

There are two distinct sorts of sex, too, it seems: help-I've-sat-on-a-piledriver-sex, complete with jewellery falling off; and snuggly pyjama sex, where the woman giggles and goes, "Rrrrrr!" like a tiger and the man says, "Ding dong!" ironically. Seriously. That's what it's like.

Kelvin MacKenzie's Brilliant Britain (Blighty) saw the former Sun editor make a distinctly perfunctory attempt to become a stand-up comic. He told a joke to some people in the street. They didn't laugh. He asked Arthur Smith and Barry Cryer for some tips. He did a few minutes at an open-mic night. Then he banked his cheque and went home.

Brainstorming gags with a scriptwriter who also looked as if he had better things to do, Kelvin uttered the words "TV formats ... assisted suicide for celebrities", which just about said it all.

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About this article

Sam Leith on last night's TV

This article appeared on p27 of the G2 section of the Guardian
on Tuesday 3 March 2009.
It was published on
the Guardian website
at 19.01 EST on Tuesday 3 March 2009.
It was last modified at 04.25 EST on Wednesday 4 March 2009.
It was first published at 19.12 EST on Tuesday 3 March 2009.